Proposal description

Wall of Coins is a peer-to-peer Bitcoin exchange that provides a private, fast, and easy method to buy Bitcoin using a variety of payment methods, including fiat deposited at a bank branch or money transmitter locations such as Western Union and Moneygram. Wall of Coins acts as escrow to ensure each transaction processes quickly. This proposal seeks funding for Wall of Coins to integrate Dash into their services.

Wall of Coins provides its services in twelve countries (including the United States, UK, Australia, Mexico, Canada, Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Latvia, Romania, Poland, and the Philippines). The service enables sellers to deposit Bitcoin into their rapid cold storage wallets, and posts their holdings for sale on the website. Buyers are able to enter their address or share their GPS coordinates and obtain a list of offers and locations nearby to purchase. Additional details on these processes and the benefits for websites integrating Wall of Coins can be found in “Additional Background” section below.

Uniquely, Wall of Coins also offers users a high level of customer support, including live support on its website and a toll-free number where representatives will even help users get set up with a wallet for the first time.

Wall of Coins key metrics illustrate substantial reach and growth:

It is growing very quickly, adding 50-100 new users a day. In fact, active users have grown from 15,000 to 18,000 since September 1st.

Services are available in 12 countries, up from 7 this spring

There are 15 “publishers” (affiliates) integrated with their API and/or Web Widget

However, the first two proposals were rejected by the network. Although it is impossible to know the rationale behind every masternode owner's vote, through a combination of reading forum posts and talking with investors, it seems there were several primary reasons leading to the rejection:

The proposal cost was quite high at approximately $82,000, and contained uncertainty over whether additional expenses would be requested to complete the project (e.g., cost overruns)

The budget was paid directly to Genitrust and therefore offered little protection against project execution risks

Because of the high level of funding requested, it would necessitate "knocking out" other valuable proposals, including essential core team functions' proposals

However, most people seem to agree that a Wall of Coins integration would be a valuable addition to Dash's ecosystem, enabling direct cash-to-Dash purchases at literally tens of thousands of locations, introducing Dash to Wall of Coin's 18,000 active users across twelve
countries, and adding Dash to Wall of Coins' API which will enable Genitrust's business partners to more easily adopt Dash.

Proposed Solution

Given the circumstances, the Dash core team has been engaged with Wall of Coins over the last two months to reach a mutually-agreeable set of terms that will finally enable Dash to integrate into their platform. We are pleased to announce that we've arrived at a more favorable set of terms that we hope the network will find agreeable and which substantially reduces the risks posed from project delivery.

The scope of work includes integrating Dash into all of Wall of Coins’ functions with the exception of the “Gift Bitcoin” service which allows users to gift Bitcoin paper wallets through the mail. In addition, Wall of Coins will enable InstantSend for all incoming and outgoing
transactions.

The general terms consists of the following:
1) The project cost will be reduced to $57,918 spread evenly across three payments of $19,306 each in the November, December, and January budget cycles. The original proposal was 42% higher than the current figure, so this represents a substantial reduction.

2) The Dash core team is submitting this proposal to the network on Genitrust's behalf, and all funds will be paid to the core team rather than Genitrust directly. The core team will act as stewards of the funds, which will be released to Genitrust based on a set of criteria
(which are outlined below).

3) The Dash core team will "make room" in the budget to better accommodate Wall of Coins integration expenses by limiting its requests, which traditionally we restrict to 80% of the total budget. By relying on existing funds and managing the expenses on other projects, we seek to include Wall of Coins within the 80% of the total budget limit.

4) Genitrust will be responsible for project communication to the community and for any cost overruns associated with the integration, while the Dash core team will provide limited technical assistance to ensure existing software tools and technical expertise is available to help lower the execution risk for Genitrust.

5) Detailed criteria for release of funds, milestones, and project completion measures will be negotiated in good faith between Genitrust and the core team which will result in the production of a granular project plan with milestones and deliverables. These will be defined in a way that will be externally verifiable to the extent possible, and will roughly align with the timeline previously outlined by Genitrust (adjusted for the new start date) contained in their previous proposal at https://www.dropbox.com/s/chddplecnxh9xed/dash-adoption-tools.pdf?dl=0. Payment #1 will be released immediately at the start of the project and defining the detailed project plan will be the first activity undertaken by the team. Payments #2 and #3 will be released based on the completion percentage of the project plan.

6) Genitrust will accept all currency risk associated with the project between the time the proposal is submitted and the funds are paid.

7) Genitrust will be responsible for all aspects of implementation, including other components not funded by these funds. These additional expenses include regulatory cost, legal cost (e.g., having terms of service rewritten), marketing costs, etc. All work will be completed by February 5th, 2017.

The main risk associated with this arrangement is that all payments are distributed in advance of the work being completed. However, by ensuring progress is made between each payment, we can provide assurances that by the time the third payment is distributed, Genitrust will have completed roughly 2/3rds of the work and would have large disincentives to discontinue work under those circumstances (not to mention the reputation impact they would suffer). This arrangement provides protection for Genitrust as well against defunding if the work is being executed according to their plan. Genitrust requested this protection because they are carrying the cost of any regulatory, legal, and cost
overrun expenses.

Requested funding is as follows starting with the November 4th budget cycle, and extending through the January cycle:

What does Wall of Coins do for the buyer?
- The buyer types in how much Fiat they are looking to spend.
- The 3 best rates and nearest locations are presented to the buyer.
- The buyer selects the location, verifies their mobile phone, and then receives the payment instructions.
- The buyer receives the coins within 15 minutes after purchase.

What does Wall of Coins do for the seller?
- The seller tells us how to contact them.
- Seller then selects their Bank account OR Cash Account, this can be any means that they accept cash.
- Seller inputs their payment details.
- Seller then selects the price rate they want for each coin.
- Seller sends coins to their advertisement. Done!
- If "Dynamic Pricing" is selected, the seller selects the Primary Market that they want their price to follow. Should this market get hacked, such as what happened with Mt Gox, Bitstamp, Cryptsy, Bitfinex, etc., Wall of Coins makes the seller select a Secondary Market (Backup market). The price is grabbed from this market if the first market fails.
- The seller can set a premium or discount percentage if their price will follow the price of another market.

What does Wall of Coins do for websites? (Such as Backpage.com)
- Any websites that has been shut out, or "blockaded", from the world of credit cards can accept cryptocurrency; however, cryptocurrency is not easy for the website visitors / end users.
- Backpage.com uses the Wall of Coins web widget for easy integration to easily receive bitcoin payments (currently) WITHOUT the end user realizing that they are using bitcoin. Image the benefits to all parties of using DASH instead (InstantSend).
- What is the widget? It is some HTML to copy/paste onto your website to allow the website to use features on the Wall of Coins site. This is similar to a website using "Log in with Facebook" or Google Analytics HTML code to gain the benefits from Facebook / Google.
- Backpage now receives payments easily AND they receive a commission for their payments. Wall of Coins is effectively a payment processor that pays their business to accept remote cash payments as Dash, while boosting the Dash marketshare.
- Backpage users want their advertisements funded as soon as possible. With Wall of Coins and DASH Instant Send, this becomes a much better solution than using Bitcoin as the payment protocol.

Show full description ...

Discussion: Should we fund this proposal?

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Dworf0 points,9 months ago

to be fair I add this review:
https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/exchanges/wall-of-coins/

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DashRiprock-3 points,9 months ago

I don't believe Wall of Coins should be doing business with Backpage. I don't think Dash should be associated with the exploitation of under aged girls.
Backpage.com CEO Facing Sex Trafficking Charges
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0brquHIwSDI

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rgenito1 point,9 months ago

Wall of Coins doesn't do business with Backpage. We allow all legal businesses to publish our widget, which still gets reviewed by our compliance team with every transaction. We stop illegal activity where we serve, just like all responsible companies.

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babygiraffe (proposal owner)0 points,8 months ago

My apologies... in the original proposal it said "web pages like backpage.com can..." and it looks like that was just a hypothetical example alongside Wikileaks of the capabilities of the system.

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qwizzie2 points,9 months ago

I voted yes, i think at one point on your previous budget proposal i even suggested doing it this way, through dev team budget and although we are talking big money here i also think it could provide a strong FIAT gateway that Dash needs.

and an old report from Easycount:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8VDPbmo7-MwJ:review.easycounter.com/wallofcoins.com+&cd=8&hl=de&ct=clnk&gl=nl
>>>>>>>>>>---------------------------------------------------------------
To create Wall Of Coins review we checked Wallofcoins.com reputation at lots of sites, including Siteadvisor and MyWOT. We found that Wallofcoins content is not safe for kids and looks fraudulent. We would describe it as mostly legit, but the site's reputation is compromised due to a number of negative reports.

Robert Genito of Genitrust Inc failed to keep it trustworthy. Please be warned that to describe security status of Wallofcoins.com we use data openly available on the Web, thus we cannot guarantee that no scam sites might have been mistakenly considered legit and no fraud or PC issues may occur in this regard. But usually the crowdsourced data we have is pretty accurate. Let's see it below.
---------------------------------------------------------------<<<<<<<<<<

Basically I know this service since the last proposal and cannot say much about it. But for sure they have a massive marketing problem.

I ask myself:
- what is the difference between "purchase location" and "seller" - both mentioned in the proposal
- why should DASH pay WOC and not other markets?
- $55,000 is a lot of money (maybe more before the recent price decline but at least less than the last proposal);

>>> my conclusion is that this kind of service could be very valuable. But WOC needs marketing - why is not one of the 10 employees busy with social media and news? With the given numbers (50 new users/d, 18000 user total, 15 affiliates, 120000 purchase locations, 1000 sellers) the platform should be deep in business but instead Backpage is mentioned multiple times where WOC is not mentioned a single time on their page. Probably Paxful.com and Bitquick.io do also claim Backpage as their customer.

I think that this investment is high risk. Every VC company would ask serious questions on the validity of the presented numbers and check their business plan thoroughly.

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rgenito1 point,9 months ago

Thank you for asking such deep questions. Honestly, I'd prefer to answer questions like this LIVE on video. Wouldn't that be pretty darn straight forward? :) I'm in the dash nation chat as "rgenito"... will you contact me about doing a video interview? You've always asked the best questions, and I'd love for you to interview me on the spot with 0 preparation or knowledge (on my part) of the questions to be asked.

Answers: all answers are provided with a "--->" followed by the answer. The answers are underneath your items that I re-posted.

warning by Bitcoinity:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/46fwp5/bitcoinity_is_warning_about_wall_of_coins/
---> the answer is already on this page. Did you read it? TL;DR is that Kacper expected us to pay a bitcoin address that he never gave us before and did not GPG sign. And he decided to go dark, not return our emails, not message me back over IM, etc. Then one day he freaks out and posts this on his site. True story, and also a reason why no one has sponsored his website since.

empty Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/wallofcoins/
---> so? go write something there if you don't want it to be empty? Also, follow the bitcointalk.org link if you'd like to see our past posts. This is for our future marketing campaigns.

nearly no updates on Facebook (except repeated refs to Dashcentral):
https://www.facebook.com/wallofcoins/
---> again: so? as we grow our marketing wing, we have much larger fish to fry, such as a new website design in the making as we speak.

and an old report from Easycount:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:8VDPbmo7-MwJ:review.easycounter.com/wallofcoins.com+&cd=8&hl=de&ct=clnk&gl=nl
---> I'm guessing there's a reason why this isn't around anymore and is stuck in cache. Was this from when we first opened publicly?

"Basically I know this service since the last proposal and cannot say much about it. But for sure they have a massive marketing problem."
---> I wouldn't say it's a "problem" we have; it's a new growth area for the Wall of Coins service. Ya can't focus on *everything* at the same time when you're a privately funded, rapidly growing company! This is simply being realistic.

on the companies background:
* https://pitchbook.com/profiles/genitrust-profile-investors-funding-valuation-and-analysis
---> This is laughably inaccurate....

I ask myself:
- what is the difference between "purchase location" and "seller" - both mentioned in the proposal
---> a "purchase location" is the place (brick-n-mortar) you go to make your payment. The "seller" is the company/individual that has an advertisement with Wall of Coins to liquidate their coins.

- why should DASH pay WOC and not other markets?
---> this is a valid question.

"...But WOC needs marketing - why is not one of the 10 employees busy with social media and news? With the given numbers (50 new users/d, 18000 user total, 15 affiliates, 120000 purchase locations, 1000 sellers) the platform should be deep in business but instead Backpage is mentioned multiple times where WOC is not mentioned a single time on their page."
---> 1) we have 21 employees, 2 are focused on building up our marketing campaigns. Our first marketing-related employee was hired 3 months ago, and the other last month.
---> 2) the platform's business is good, and the business positioning in this industry is insanely on point. Marketing is our upcoming deadly weapon.
---> 3) Go use backpage and you'll see that Wall of Coin's Web Widget is integrated with them---this is in the area where you buy credits, not on the front page or some place that has no context. And yes, backpage does mention WOC. In fact, WOC was the very first exchange/marketplace ever mentioned by Backpage.

I think that this investment is high risk. Every VC company would ask serious questions on the validity of the presented numbers and check their business plan thoroughly.
---> You can never do enough research, right? :) Thank you for bringing up these issues and asking great, relevant questions!

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disciple1 point,9 months ago

Good point, Dworf: "why should DASH pay WOC and not other markets?"

This question is valid for many proposals, where DASH is supposed to finance what is done for free with other alts.

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ddink72 points,9 months ago

It's a matter of bootstrapping. Sure, we could stop funding integrations and just wait around a few years to see if these sites discover us and integrate us...or we could jumpstart the process by funding the integrations ourselves. Every other coin out there is just languishing, hoping to one day be discovered and hoping that one day WoC or whomever will spend the tens of thousands of dollars necessary to integrate them. We are taking the lead and jump starting the process...which is why all the other coins will continue to languish as we grow.

Not for nothing, the smartest thing PayPal ever did was pay new users a $10 bonus for signing up =)

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Dworf0 points,9 months ago

I agree - but Paypal is over and eg. Blockpay was happy to include DASH into their portfolio for free - what I commented was just for information for anyone who votes - basically for $55,000 the proposal owner should give that information by himself - I hope not to be overcritical - but I keep my evaluation that this proposal is high risk - some numbers on turnover and profit would help

in this case I will not reveal my own voting

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DashRiprock2 points,9 months ago

I understand your concerns Dworf and personally feel $55,000 is more than we should have to spend. Unfortunately, Dash needs an American fiat gateway in the worst way. The debit cards from Shakepay and Spectrocoin are not available in the USA and that is where the highest concentration of Dash users live. I truly believe that this investment will payoff in the long run and give us some much needed positive publicity in the short term. The price of Dash on Coinmarketcap peaked at $15.05 on 8/14/16 at 1pm. As of 10/27/16 at 4:52pm the price is only $9.70 so we need to move forward with this proposal since it will only help to increase the price of Dash.

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Dworf0 points,9 months ago

what about this: https://coinomat.com/#DASH/USD

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rgenito0 points,9 months ago

did you try using it? internal server error...

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Dworf-1 point,9 months ago

Bitsquare is available in the USA which primarily works as a fiat gateway

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DashRiprock2 points,9 months ago

I just visited Bitsquare's website and they let you buy Bitcoin with USD then you can use the Bitcoin to buy Dash or another cryptocurrency. Wall of Coins will let you buy Dash directly with USD.

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rgenito2 points,9 months ago

I believe the answer to "why should DASH pay XXXXX" is because that's what DASH does, that's what sets DASH apart from other currencies, that's what makes DASH awesome, and THAT is what will constantly grow DASH's ecosystem and development focus! It is pure genius, and I see this attracting way more businesses and infrastructure developers than any other digital currency, including bitcoin. This "why should DASH pay XXXXX" is simply answered by: That is exactly what will make DASH successful and #1. That's why!

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rgenito1 point,9 months ago

...and just to be clear, it is obviously not the *only* thing that makes Dash awesome and on its way to the top!

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cefeme-1 point,9 months ago

Naive question: did Bitcoin pay anybody to be "integrated" into wall of coins? If no, why should we? And why so MUCH money? Voting no for the time being.

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rgenito0 points,9 months ago

Evan's point pretty much nails it. But here's an answer that I feel is appropriate and direct: "why should we?" because the protocol specifies so. It was designed that way. I know this is obvious, but isn't that one of the biggest incentives to improve for the Dash ecosystem?

Dash rewards business development, marketing, programming, etc., and that speaks HUGE for the democratic Dash ecosystem. Bitcoin only pays miners, who aren't required to care for or give back to the ecosystem.

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cefeme1 point,9 months ago

rgenito the protocol does not specify whom to pay. My point is, if your Wall of Coins integrated other cryptocurrencies without receiving a prepayment for that, it was because you expected to make a profit from that work. If you do expect to make a profit from selling Dash, and I hope you do, why should Dash be paying for the development needed to integrate it? Just do it and enjoy your profit. If you fear that your integration work will not result in sufficient profit to cover the integration expenses, it is clearly not a good idea to pay for them in advance.

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eduffield3 points,9 months ago

Bitcoin has the "first mover" advantage, so they basically got a free pass to get integrated into many different platforms. The possible pitfall we want to avoid is simply waiting for services like this to integrate with us, without any incentive. We have a new first mover advantage, that's to allow us to pay for integrations and fund our own network's expansion. The question we should be asking is how much volume will this market create over the first year, if it costs $55k to integrate, but the opportunity creates a million dollars of new capital inflows, then the investment return was nearly 20 to 1.

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cefeme0 points,9 months ago

Evan I agree with the need to do things that first movers did not need to. However, integration into exchanges should be the consequence of buying pressure, otherwise it ensures nothing. I would also love to see Dash being sold directly at several exchanges, because that would mean that people are requesting the currency. However, a PAID_FOR integration is one in which the owner of the exchange risks little or nothing, and therefore has little or no incentive to do things effectively. If the owner of Wall of Coins really sees Dash as a business opportunity, he should be more than happy to provide the initial investment.

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thedesertlynx1 point,9 months ago

Also, if I'm not mistaken, this also includes PayPal. Meaning, one could buy Dash with PayPal, or receive PayPal from a Dash payment. That's really significant.

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rgenito2 points,9 months ago

Yes, it does! I just noticed that the proposal is missing this.

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thedesertlynx1 point,9 months ago

I've been waiting for this to pass for months. In an age of ever-slower Bitcoin transactions, we need more ways of getting Dash without going through BTC first. Please pass this!

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dashascash1 point,9 months ago

Will any of the code developed be open sourced or made available to the Dash foundation? Will there be API documentation such that an independent developer could write an IOS or Android application to take advantage of the service?

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rgenito1 point,9 months ago

The development is closed source. While the API documentation is lacking now, we have a HUGE website update planned for the end of November that has updated API documentation--the documentation will be more thorough with many examples and use cases, sort of like the documentation on the Web Widget.

That documentation will also be updated for working with the DASH context!

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whalehunter0 points,9 months ago

"The development is closed source."

Why? I can't understand why we as blockchain should pay for something, with which a company will make money in the end and if they say for example, "hey we are going out of business", we payed around 50 000 $ for absolute nothing, because its closed source!

I won't understand how someone could vote yes for that ...

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DashRiprock1 point,9 months ago

Because we are not Bitcoin and companies are not throwing buckets of money at us and the price of Dash has dropped by over 33% since August 14th. We need a fiat gateway in the USA and remember every business deal has risk.

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rgenito1 point,9 months ago

Closed-source is also a good thing to do. It depends on the business. This is a business that will serve the Dash ecosystem. "Hey we are going out of business" simply isn't going to happen, and if it does--for the interest of the code serving the world still--then the Dash community gets the code. It's a win-win.

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daf2 points,9 months ago

Nice, detailed proposal. My vote will be yes.

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rgenito1 point,9 months ago

I appreciate the comment and support...thank you daf! Looking forward to serving DASH!

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DashRiprock0 points,9 months ago

I don't understand why this proposal is being submitted so late. It seems to me if you want it to have the best chance to get funded it should be submitted in November with the next round of proposals or submitted this month with a December start date so there is plenty of time to gather votes. The way this is being done doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Also, I don't know of any proposal accompanied by a Youtube video interview that did not get funded, i.e. Vanbex PR, Dash Detailed, Dashous, The Crypto Show, Dash Soda-Machine and Living Room of Satoshi. All these proposals had videos and they all got funded. Am I the only one that sees a pattern here?

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babygiraffe (proposal owner)1 point,9 months ago

This proposal is being submitted somewhat late in the cycle because negotiations were ongoing until the early part of this week. I submitted the proposal as soon as we reached an agreement on what to approach the network with. Also, because of the timing of other projects within Genitrust, we needed to fund this in November or it would have had to wait until next year.

We also were less concerned about the timing because 1) there was more than a week before the next budget cycle, and 2) this proposal has been submitted several times under different terms, so MN owners should be very familiar with its contents by now (the only things that have changed are the exact terms).

I know that rgenito has reached out to Dash Detailed and many others to offer an interview, but it is really up to those show owners whether they want to conduct one. If you'd like to see him interviewed (which I also think is a great idea), might I suggest you reach out to various shows and recommend it... it might help make that happen.